The Weekly Anthropocene Reviews: The Rescue Effect by Michael Mehta Webster
A The Weekly Anthropocene Book Review
Michael Mehta Webster is a Ph.D. zoologist, Environmental Studies Professor at NYU, and former Executive Director of the Coral Reef Alliance. His new book. The Rescue Effect provides a whirlwind tour of the global fight to preserve Earth’s biodiversity, focusing on the “rescue effect,” Dr. Webster’s umbrella term for the multitude of ways wild creatures can restore their populations. Dr. Webster describes six main facets to the rescue effect: demographic rescue, reproductive rescue, genetic rescue, phenotypic rescue, geographic rescue, and evolutionary rescue.
Demographic rescue is very simple: animals moving into another part of their range where that animal’s population is low. New immigrants coming in, in other words. This can be natural diffusion, or human-aided, as in the case of wolves in Yellowstone or dozens of other reintroduction projects.
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